2.10 Eyes are Windows into the Soul

Two years ago, I picked up the game of squash. It’s quite the good workout if you’re looking for some cardiovascular exercise. Squash enthusiasts, as well as official sports organizations, recommend that players should wear proper eye protective gear. It seemed a bit funny to wear glasses that were neither for the sun or to correct vision. For two years I had not retained any type of injury due to this activity. My confidence, or what some might refer to as, my arrogance, swelled to a tipping point.
Last week while playing, the ball bounced awkwardly off the rim of my racket and fired straight into my open right eye. Yes, it was as painful as it sounds. I immediately dropped my racket and although I have the illusion that I can stand pain, that I’m a ‘real man’, I believe my reaction went something like this: “Ah, my eye, my EYE! Ahhhhhhhhhh!”

Blinking profusely, I could see, but the outer rims of my sightline were cloudy and black spots popped in and out. My squash partner suggested I wash out the eye with water. In the bathroom, I was scared to look. The right eye (the one struck by the ball) was dilated. Dilation is bad, isn’t it?

The good sport and real man that I am, I returned to the game. I missed several shots but chalked this up to my slow reflexes. Perhaps I was in shock. We finished for the evening and as I walked home, my inclination to manifest the worst possible outcomes of a situation grew ameba-like in my mind: What if I have a black eye? It hit me in the right eye and I’m right-handed, does this matter? What if my until-this-moment-perfect-vision is compromised? What if they have to remove the eye?

On my return home, I immediately checked the mirror: Pupil still dilated. It was eerie looking into my eyes, the irises uneven. The pain had subsided into a distant throbbing. The area around the eye was red but that was probably due to rubbing it.

I decided to go to sleep. I had this vision of me sitting slumped over in a doctor’s office. An overweight doctor, complete with white coat and stethoscope, entered the room. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to remove the eye,” he said, non-chalantly. Then, like an edit in a movie, I was on a gurney being wheeled into an operating room. The nurses put me under and as I drifted into unconsciousness, I heard them laughing, “It was a squash ball!” I woke the next morning in a cold sweat.

I rushed to the bathroom mirror. I still had two eyes but there was something else.

Emanating from my shoulders and head was the colour red. It was cloudy, pulsing with a halo-like fuzziness. I stepped out of view of the mirror and then looked again. The red aura followed my body, stemmed from my head and grew ever fainter the farther down my body it traveled. I covered my right eye (the one that was hit with the squash ball) and when looking through only my left eye, the aura was gone. I reversed this and when I only looked through my right eye, the aura returned.

I prepared for work and tried to put this out of my mind for now. It must have been shock. Everything would be fine.

On my way to the subway station, I passed an old woman. The colour green bounced off her skull like steam. On the subway platform, every colour of the rainbow was represented and I stood stunned and wondered if anyone else was seeing this. I tapped an orange-headed young woman on the shoulder, “Excuse me, do you see any colours bouncing off the heads of the people around us?” She walked to the other end of the platform to wait for the subway.

When I exited the subway, there was a store that sold prescription eyeglasses. There was an ‘A’-sign outside that said, “The Doctor is In!” The exclamation mark was a bit disconcerting but I entered the store nonetheless. At the back of the store there was a tiny makeshift clinic. The administration woman had a yellow aura streaming from her head. I provided my name and filled out some forms.

Inside the examining room, an overweight doctor entered, complete with white coat and stethoscope. He was reading my chart and without looking up, said non-chalantly, “I’m afraid we’re going to have to remove the eye.” After a pause, he started laughing, in what I regarded as inappropriately loud.

The doctor said my eye should be fine, the throbbing would subside and I should buy a pair of protective glasses. He had a brown aura. Slightly embarrassed, I asked him about seeing colours. He got mad, told me a doctor’s office was no place for jokes. I was shunned. Jerk. Maybe that’s why he was practicing in the back of a store.

That night, I called a friend of mine that spoke of seeing auras before. Her aura experiences represented her quirky personality but she also liked feeling special. She provided the entire rundown:

“That squash ball might have been sent by a divine spirit,” said my friend. “You might be on to an entirely new spiritual quest. You need to go see an ‘I’ doctor.”

I told her about my unpleasant experience with the comedian doctor in the back of the eyeglass store. She emphasized that she meant ‘I’ doctor, someone that could give me an ‘Aura Reading’ and perhaps provide some other questions. I thanked her for her help and promised to call if I saw someone with ‘clear white light’ around them.

Lady Mary Jane, known in Toronto as “The Lady who forsaw, helped, guided, cured and changed people’s destiny”, seemed to be the best choice. According to her website: “The psychic Lady Mary Jane is an extraordinary ninth generation parapsychologist who does her readings based on aura and photographs of people. Lady Mary Jane is the psychic that can meet a person in the plane, store or park and surprise them with what will happen tomorrow or who they will marry, or when they will have a baby, or describe their future boss and many other personal things.”

My appointment was at night and when I entered the darkened room, Lady Mary Jane gasped. Not exactly what you want a psychic to do on your arrival. She rushed over to me, telling me that I had the colour black bouncing off my back. She dismissed me, said she couldn’t help, that I was doomed, that she would have to clean her place to remove all the negative energy I unleashed inside her home.

I wasn’t planning on dying anytime soon but what control do you have over that really? I have hated exactly one person in my life – I mean really hated – but that was ten years ago. I don’t forgive but hold grudges steadfastly, so perhaps this was the cause of the black aura. I could name five things off the top of my head that could represent unresolved karma (old relationships, old friendships, lost jobs, lost opportunities, forgotten responsibilities, etc.), but who doesn’t? Dark intentions (just read some of the previous blog entries) and shadow games might not be at the surface but I’m sure they're there somewhere.

The one that confounded me was compassion for self. This was the concept that made me walk the streets until the sun crept over the horizon. I examined every minute of my life that I could remember, explored every situation from all angles and realized that my compassion often leapt to the other party. What cracked open was the idea that there was little compassion left for myself. I wasn’t going to die (not yet) and my karma was probably evened out. So no, the colour black that surrounded me must have been sending a message that I needed to take care of myself better. Needed to understand my intentions better, cut myself some slack. Untighten those neck muscles, stop blaming myself for everything, perhaps even give myself some credit where it’s due.

There were no colours popping from the people I passed on the street. When I returned home, my pupil was no longer dilated. After work that day, I went to a sporting goods store and bought a pair of silly looking protective glasses.